


Families Lost And Found

by lilnome



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: F/M, MariBat
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-20
Updated: 2020-07-18
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:00:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24820471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilnome/pseuds/lilnome
Summary: Marinette, next head of the Parisian Triad,  finds a man injured outside her apartment building and takes him in. What feelings will develop?
Relationships: Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug/Jason Todd
Comments: 12
Kudos: 128





	1. Chapter 1

Marinette had many fond memories of being young. Her Mama singing her ancient lullabies as she combed her jet black hair. Visiting with Aunt Talia twice a year, and meeting her Godson Damain Al Ghul. Celebrating Chinese New Year with her maternal family in China, and being slipped small weapons along with her hongbao, eating _jian dui_ with her cousins in between lessons. Her Aunties teaching her how to use her beauty to beguile and bewilder. Her Uncles showing her how to hold a knife. Her Maa-Maa showing her how to sew hidden pockets into all her clothes, and Ah-Gung showing her the many pressure points on a man that could cripple someone in seconds. Her older female cousins taught her how to use her _bu yao_ as a deadly weapon, all the soft spots on a person that would hurt the worst when stabbed with the sharpened hair ornaments. Her older male cousins lessons were in subterfuge and misdirection. By the time she was seven, Marinette was well aware that most girls her age weren’t taught these things. But hey, Marinette was the next head of the Parisian branch of the Triad. Her younger cousin Bridgette would be her second in command, as she was the daughter of _Maa-Maa_ and _Ah_ - _Ghung’s_ second child, Marinette’s Uncle Lee Cheng. Marinette knew her second and third cousins were scattered across Europe, ruling their branches with a velvet-covered iron fist, as they were all taught, by family law.

  
She had been on her way home from a ‘family gathering’, really just a meeting at the front Cousin Yo owned, a large rental hall that could be equipped for any even. In reality, it was a trimonthly gathering of all heads of the Triad’s French branch. They were all, aside from her and her mother, from different cities across the country. She was almost back to her penthouse when she saw it, a man leaning against the wall of her building and staring at the five-star Italian restaurant across the street. The restaurant that just so happened to be her eighteenth birthday gift from Mama, and a front for a smuggling ring the Triad had started almost ten years ago. They didn’t smuggle drugs or guns, but refugees, people who needed a new place to call home for some reason or another. Could he be a cop? Or worse, from the Russians? They had been rearing their heads again, trying to push their experimental heroin blend onto Triad streets, and Sabine had been sure to stomp them into the dust.  
Waving her hand nonchalantly, her guards paused, and Marinette advanced on the man. His eyes snapped to hers, and his gaze seemed to bore into her very soul. His hair was peeking out from under a rather beat up beanie, and most of it was black, aside from a few white strands hanging over his eyes. She could see that under his mismatched clothes, he was wrapped like a mummy in bandages.

“Sir, are you okay?” She asked, raising her hands to show she means no harm.

“I... I’m from Talia. She said to find -” He managed to get out before his eyes rolled back in his head and he dropped like a brick.

“Boys!” Marinette calls, and her guards, two men from the Italians, ‘gifted’ to her as goodwill gifts on her sixteenth birthday, Tony and Bobby, leapt into action, grabbing the man under the arm and throwing his arms over their shoulders. Marinette grabbed her key card from her phone wallet and swiped it at the keypad that opened the door to the lobby. The building was owned entirely by members of the Triad, filled with families of those in service to the organization. It was securely guarded 24/7, and the higher up in the building you were, the higher ranked you were. Marinette was in the penthouse, an entire floor to herself. Her guards and closest confidants had apartments on the floor just below her. Waving off the doorman, Marinette made her way straight for the elevator bay and pressed the call button for her personal elevator.  
The ride was agonizingly slow, but after what felt like hours, the car arrived at her hallway. Digging her keys out of her purse, Marinette quickly unlocked the door and ushered her guards inside.

“Set him on the couch and go home, I need to check him for injuries.” Tony and Bobby shared a discomforted look, but nodded and obeyed her orders. Marinette quickly grabbed her first aid kit from the bathroom, a massive, clunky thing that could probably stock a small doctor’s office for days. When she came back, the man was still asleep on the couch, breathing slowly and deep. Now that she looked him over more carefully, his clothes were clearly stolen, as none of them seemed to fit quite the same. With a sigh, Marinette drew the medical scissors from the case and began to casually cut away his jacket. Underneath that was a hoodie, with presumably another layer underneath. This would take a while. Sighing, Marinette pulled away and threw aside the scraps of material. There didn’t seem to be any blood on him, but she would have to keep going to be sure. After the hoodie came a long sleeve shirt and a tank-top, and he was left coated in bandages from the waist up. He was swaddled like a damn mummy, oddly enough. He had mentioned Auntie Talia...could she have? No, Great-Uncle Ras would never allow some random outsider or underling to be bathed in the pits, he was far too possessive for that.

Right as she started cutting upwards from the hem of the man’s pant legs, he sat bolt right up, gasping. He saw her and scrambled backwards, while Mari just raised an unimpressed eyebrow at him.

“Where am I?” He demanded, eyes darting around the living room.

“Relax, my name is Marinette, and you’re in Paris, in my penthouse. I found you outside, you collapsed. My guards and I brought you in. I started cutting away your clothes so that I could assess you for injuries. I believe you’ve had some experience with my Auntie Talia and her League, and she sent you to find me. She would have said to find ‘she who rises’. It’s the meaning of my name, Marinette. Now, please sit down. I’m not armed, and I don’t intend to harm you. Look, you can pat me down if you need to make sure I’m not armed at all.” The man gave her a wary look, before taking a deep breath and sitting back down on the couch, perched on the very edge of the cushion. Good, Auntie Talia had instilled him with some preservation instincts.

“So, Auntie? I’m going to assume you’re related to Ras and Damain, then.”

“Not at all.” Marinette scoffed. “My family runs the Parisian Triad, and all future heads are trained by the League for a year and a day. Ras trained my mother at the same time as Talia was beginning to train. They consider themselves sisters, making Talia my Auntie. I am, however, Damian’s godmother. He’s a sweet boy, once you put aside the homicidal tendencies. Are you hungry? I can have the place across the street, the one you were staking out, run us some food. Anything specific you want? Their ravioli is to die for.”

“That would...that would be great. I’ll eat anything.” The man (who looked to be around her age, late twenties) seemed caught off guard by her kindness.

“So, it appears you have me at a disadvantage. You know my name, but I don’t know yours.” Marinette commented, texting James, the head chef of Nona Gina’s to bring over her usual plus a plate of ravioli.

“My name is Jason. So, you mentioned the Parisian Triad.”

“Yup. My Mama is the current head, I have a year and a half before I take over. Tradition states I become head on my twenty-fifth birthday.”

“Any chance you’re looking for a new bodyguard? I’m gonna need to find a job, and I can guarantee that I’m good.” Marinette paused, thinking for a moment. Both her guards were more than adequate, but Bobby had come to her last week, and asked to be transferred to a more sedate job, as his wife (Laura, a lovely woman) had just birthed their third child, and he wanted a little more time off. Jason, on one hand, was likely League trained, and probably had no where else to go. On the other hand, he was a complete unknown, and it would be a week at least before she would be able to contact Auntie Talia and have a response as to whether the man was telling the truth. Well, Bridgette always said she was too soft.

“Good news for you is, I am. You can start as soon as the family doctor looks you over and gives you a clean bill of health. The issue is, what will your cover be?”

“Er, cover?” Jason asked.

“I’m going to need an excuse to suddenly have a random guy escorting me all over Paris, and it’s not exactly common knowledge that I’m the next head of the Triad. I’m also something of a public figure here in Paris.” Marinette blushed at the reminder. Her brand, MDC, had taken off not long after she graduated, thanks to Jagged bragging about her at every turn. “I mean,” she snorted. “we could go the route of claiming you’re my boyfriend or something.” Giggling, Marinette stood and made her way towards her room. “Try to think of something, while I grab a quick shower. I can’t stand family meetings.” Leaving Jason seated on the couch, lost in thought, Marinette shut her door behind her and fired off a quick text to the number saved as “Auntie T’ in her main phone, before grabbing a pair of pajamas from her walk in and heading to the attached bathroom. She had some thinking to do.


	2. Chapter 2

By the time Marinette was out of the shower, she had come to a conclusion. She would keep Jason here at the penthouse under the pretense of him ‘recovering’ until she got a response from Auntie Talia. If she didn’t get a response in a week, she would send the man back to wherever he came from. If she did, and the man was trustworthy, she’d take him to the family compound at the outer edge of the city. The compound was a massive fenced-in collection of housing, dedicated solely to keeping the younger members of the Family safe when they weren’t in school, and to house those who were…under Familial _custody_. Throwing on a pair of pajama shorts, a t-shirt, and her favorite fuzzy socks, Marinette wrapped her hair in a towel and sighed. What was she getting herself into?

Making her way back out to the living room, Marinette sighed when she saw Jason fast asleep on the couch again. There was a takeout container with traces of white sauce sitting on the table in front of him. From the looks of it, he had likely eaten and fallen fast asleep. If she let him sleep, he would wake up with a stomach ache, but if she woke him, he might try to attack her again. Then again, the threat of potential danger had never stopped her before. Shrugging, Marinette grabbed the trash and the container of her food and moved them to the kitchen, dropping the trash into the bin as she went past. With a sigh, Marinette stood at the back of the couch and reached out, preparing to shake Jason’s shoulder. His hand lashed out and grabbed her wrist in a crushing grip, making her yelp.

“So it _wasn’t_ a dream.” He grumbled, sitting up and rubbing at the bridge of his nose.

“Nope!” Marinette chirped, tugging her wrist free of his hand. “You can crash later; we have a few things to deal with for now. We need to give you a background and a fake identity, and figure out why Auntie sent you to find me. C’mon, my office is this way. We can work on those documents, while I call someone to bring you a change of clothes and call for Doctor Yang. I never got a chance to check you for injuries, but you don’t seem to be in too much pain.” As she babbled (a nervous habit that she’d never outgrown) she led him to her home office, a large room with a bay of windows facing the Seine.

Jason paused at the doorway, assessing the room, probably looking for exits and possible weapons. Good, that was one point for him being who he said he was. The first thing the League trained into their recruits was an intense paranoia. Then again, he could be a spy from another Family. She’d need to keep an eye out; it wouldn’t be the first time one of them took a disliking to _Mama_ ’s method of mercy and kindness. With a sigh, Marinette settled into her office chair and clicked her computer on, before grabbing her phone from the charging dock.

“ _Aiya, who is it?_ ” The voice on the other end answered after a few rings.

“ _An, it’s Eu-funh. I have someone from the League here, we need new clothes for him. I’ll text you his sizes. Put it all on the family expense card.”_

“ _I understand. Your apartment or your home?_ ”

“ _My apartment. He is still an unknown_.”

“ _It will be done, princess. I’ll be less than an hour._ ”

“ _Good, see you then_.” Hanging up, Marinette steepled her fingers and looked at Jason. “So, before I go to the trouble of making you an entirely new identity, who do you want to be?”

“Pardon?”

“What background do you want? I can make you the son of a rich CEO, or some random no one. I can make you a man with eight PHDs, or someone who barely graduated high school. So, what will it be?”

“Can I just be…average? If I’m gonna be working for you, I kinda need to be able to blend, don’t I?” Marinette smirked, full of teeth. For a moment, Jason was reminded of a shark.

“Excellent. We can give you a perfectly average GPA, some defense training, a false employment record at Family-owned businesses, and make you into the ultimate nobody.” Pulling up her digital contact book, Marinette quickly found the email of her preferred forger. True, they were an independent agent most of the time, but they were also incredible at what they did. After firing off a quick email (encoded, of course) Marinette leaned back in her chair.

“So. What’s your story?” She asked, staring him down.

“I’m sorry, you have to reach level eight friendship to unlock my tragic backstory.” Jason snarked. Marinette smirked, trying not to laugh.

“Alrighty then. Guess I’ll start. I was a pretty normal kid, all things considered, until I was fifteen. I was being bullied by a girl in my class, some Italian brat. According to Family Laws, I couldn’t order a hit on anyone until I was eighteen, and I can’t order a hit on a child. So, instead, I got smart and asked my _Mama_ for help. I hired some guys to infiltrate her apartment and plant bugs and speakers. I slowly started gathering intel on her, and eventually began to play sounds at night or when she was alone. After eight weeks, she had a psychotic break and was sent home to Italy to a mental institution. That was my first act as heiress to the Parisian Triad.” Jason sat there, processing, before letting out an impressed whistle.

“Well, I’m impressed. I would have just beat the shit out of her.”

“Eh. I had built the persona of a sweet, innocent girl. I also would likely have gotten caught, since I was still a total rooky.” Marinette shrugged.

“After that, I transferred to an elite private school with my cousin Bridgette, who you’ll probably meet soon, and my best friend Kagami. Attended that school until I graduated, and went to college for an associates degree in business. Currently, I’m going for a bachelor’s in Fashion Merchandising. I’ve lived in Paris for most of my life, but I spend every Summer in China visiting family. Mind telling me where you’re from? Your French isn’t too bad, but you still have a faint American accent.”

“I’m from Jersey.” He eventually said, frowning. “I…I don’t remember where exactly.” His cheek twitched. He was lying to her. Marinette didn’t like lying, but sometimes people felt more comfortable with little white lies and half-truths.

“You know, I have family in New Jersey,” Marinette remarked, thinking of Damian. She was one of the few who knew where Damian was now, and who his father was. “A godson.” The computer dinged “I’ll have to see if you two would have ever crossed paths later. For now, we have a few identities to look through.”


End file.
